Do people have pen pals anymore?
Asked by
2davidc8 (
10189
)
September 8th, 2018
I remember that in the old days, when there was only snail mail, it was fun to correspond with someone in a foreign land. The letters would take a week or so to arrive if you used airmail, a month or maybe two if you used “surface mail”. It was a more leisurely pace, you did not feel compelled to reply right away, and the letters tended to be long. It was a pleasure to read them.
A quick Google search shows that there are at least a dozen pen pal websites. I’m wondering if any of you have used any of these sites to find people just to correspond with. What websites are best? Did you learn about other cultures this way? And did you eventually visit each other?
Is this sort of activity still popular, or are these sites no longer necessary for this purpose because we now use email, Facebook, and other social networking sites?
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6 Answers
I haven’t, but my daughter’s French class set up pen pal connections to practice.
Yes, it would seem to be great way to practice a foreign language!
The only pen pals I ever hear about anymore are girls who write to guys in prison. Other than that, I think snail mail has been crushed in the world of texting, tweeting, Facebooking, or other social media. I’m even finding it difficult to find anyone willing to email because it’s considered too much trouble. Think about it, the current generation prefers to date online rather than meeting a person IRL because it’s too time consuming.
I have been writing to my Pen Pal in France since I was 14 years of age, and I am a senior now.
We write emails now..she in French , and I in English since we both don’t speak nor write in the others language.
I cut and paste her email letters onto Google translate then print them out and thus have years of correspondence that could be in a book. Its more like a journal we both have had events in our lives that were devastating plus good times too. We exchanged records in the 1960’s of each others preference of music etc.
It started when I saw an ad for Pen Pals in our Social Studies current Events bulletin and we had lost touch with each other when we married but reconnected again in about 2006/2008.
She is a great distant friend and we learned a lot from each other. We still do.
Unfortunately I took French in school but at that time it was not conversational French and thus useless in the real world.
This Fall i plan of taking French lessons in hopes of visiting her one day in France and hope to be able to talk with her in person.
I also had a couple of Pen Pals that did not keep up the communication due to the costs of mailing to Africa and Brazil so we lost touch. There was a site called PenPals.com but I think it got hacked or something as no one gets replies from them. I have not checked there site for years but I am sure that there are others much better out there, just google it.
From what I’ve read, a number of people in the jail have pen pals. It is one of their way to socialize and form a relationship when people they know have abandoned them, not to mention that it’s also a good way to con some people in to believing your story and sending you gifts (you need to be a good romantic catfish, though).
@Unofficial_Member
You can request administrator of site that no communication with people in jail etc Usually the website screens them out anyways.
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